With the recently announced change to Enrage to remove the 10% more damage taken I was thinking of finding a way to pick up King of the Jungle for more burst.

After going over the tree the best place I could come up with 3 points with out hurting survivability was by taking them out of Fury Swipes. Looking at some of our logs it seems like Fury Swipes make up about 7% of our Feral tanks damage. Does anyone know if more rage and 15% more damage for 10 seconds every minute is going to be better then that?

Ha! You know I never even thought how the change might effect our standard bear spec. In complete honesty I could see it being used for fights where you have to quickly pick up a new target like maybe Defense System and possibly don't have a tricks readily available to you. In all honesty though after the first 30secish of a fight threat is such a joke that I don't know if we'd need to really do anything to the spec.

The notion that bears will have a dps/threat cooldown once a minute is interesting. There are certainly cases where we would just build it into the rotation, just like we do with TF for cats. I can see it being used for every large add on Cho'gall - or perhaps at the start of an AOE phase - such as the green phase in Meloriak where you may not have a huge threat lead on all of the adds, and using Enrage + Swipe/Thrash/Swipe will lock down the adds.

It is a lot easier to find useful times for a 1 minute cooldown than it is for a 3 minute cooldown.

I have a build right now with KoTJ at the expense of Brutal Impact (and 1 point from Stampede). With the change to make interrupts always hit, taking Brutal Impact for Bear is a lot more compelling (I have been raiding as a kitty/ offtank in 25 man which is why I added KoTJ in).

Raid comp may be the determining factor in addition to fight mechanics for what makes the most sense.

I'm sold. To me (working on normal modes) its not bear's sustained threat that is a problem, its cementing the early aggro before Vengeance comes up. So I think having the Enrage up during the first ten seconds of the fight, particularly multi-mob, is a big selling point. My sustained threat at my iLvl is way ahead of our DPS so losing Fury Swipe seems trivial. On a personal level, I hate Fury Swipes, it is just some brain-dead, invisible talent. I'd much rather have a button to intelligently press when I need it.

Clearly another good reason to go hybrid; KoTJ is already necessary for good hybrid play, so having this is a win anyway.

It's good for burst but not sustained threat compared to fury swipes. Fury swipes is stellar for overall threat. That being said early burst threat on aoe, extra damage on berserk, etc - these things are Much More Better for most of the time play. Threat is rarely an issue after 30 seconds, but early on it's a big deal.

I would imagine you'd find it a lot more fun and interesting to have KotJ over fury swipes. A passive damage boost (and one that can't even trigger SD procs) vs an active, big boost damage? Good times.

I would highly recomend that you don't drop Endless Carnage. Dropping that talent will make it very difficult to keep Pluverize up with it only lasting 10 seconds. It's a very importent ability that helps us keep our Savage Defense uptime higher. I would recomend either losing Infected Wounds, or Feral Agression. Both are nice to have, but can be applied by others in the raid.

Thanks, i didnt even notice that, was just trying to get a point or 2 in KotJ, here is my new spec http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMrdkubzrckMcu i added the points to carnage, took one point from stampede since haste isnt important to bears, or cats for that matter, and put it in KotJ, hopefully it will help with threat for fights like maloriak since i usually pick up the adds due to our other tank not feeling comfortable doing it.

dozzerr wrote:Thanks, i didnt even notice that, was just trying to get a point or 2 in KotJ, here is my new spec http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMrdkubzrckMcu i added the points to carnage, took one point from stampede since haste isnt important to bears, or cats for that matter, and put it in KotJ, hopefully it will help with threat for fights like maloriak since i usually pick up the adds due to our other tank not feeling comfortable doing it.

FYI cats don't take Stampede for haste. It dosn't give haste to cats. We take it for the Ravages.

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dozzerr wrote:Thanks, i didnt even notice that, was just trying to get a point or 2 in KotJ, here is my new spec http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMrdkubzrckMcu i added the points to carnage, took one point from stampede since haste isnt important to bears, or cats for that matter, and put it in KotJ, hopefully it will help with threat for fights like maloriak since i usually pick up the adds due to our other tank not feeling comfortable doing it.

FYI cats don't take Stampede for haste. It dosn't give haste to cats. We take it for the Ravages.

I know cats use it for the ravages, and after looking at the tooltip the haste is just for bears, i always misread it for some reason and thought it gave the haste to both bears and cats. Guess i need to read more carefully

I pulled points out of Feral Agression to support KotJ. It's my opinion that this talent is on the 'must have' list, I run a mastery/expertise bear gear build and this talent is invaluable on fights like Alysrazor, for both Hatchlings, and kitty DPS during the 'burn out' phases. It's great on Shannox since taunts don't work, it's great on Ryolith to help put extra damage on the adds...I'm a fan.

YOu shouldn't be taunting or swapping tanks on Shannox anyway. One tank tanks shannox, one tanks riplimb, and you drop your stacks by having them far away from each other and dropping stacks during the spear throws.

I do think it's a very good talent; it gives a large amount of damage/threat at the point you need it the most (transitions/starts of fights), and with FF being a high priority to use anyway FA is not as important.